The Art of Feeling is a cliche coming of age LGBT story about Claire, who moves from Brooklyn to to Astoria, where her mother was born and raised and had always hoped they would go back to.  It is a bittersweet return as Claire's mother passed away, so it is just her and her dad coming to this new town to live, to see out her mother's hopes for them.  Going to school Claire meets Alexa, the 'bad girl' who is a top student, whose father is the mayor and seems rather emotionally distant.The story itself isn't exactly bad.  In fact the basic plot of a girl travelling to her mother's home town with her father, to try and fit in for her last year in school while still trying to come to terms with the fact that her mother is gone, is a good one, the added part with Alexa and the romance between them is also good.  It's just everything else is so bland.  Alexa has two main friends, we know little about them, but they come across as being bitchy and two-faced and that is it.  We know nothing else about their personalities or anything else. There is also a moment when Alexa and Claire gain more to their friendship, with Claire meeting Alexa's dad for the first time - with little knowledge as to what he is like personally - and saying:"Speaking of dads, how did you convince the stiff to let you have a motorcycle?"Given how their friendship slowly progressed, I don't know if this would be such a thing to say at this point, Alexa didn't give much away in regards to how close she was to her dad or the love they had.  So for Claire to come out like that would be a little bit rude.Claire also makes her first friend with a hairdresser, who happens to be trans, called Miss Susie, we know so little about her too, aside from the fact that Claire goes to her for advice and at the end of the book where some extra information is revealed.  It would have been so nice to just get to grips more with Miss Susie, she could have been a far more interesting character if there was just more done with her."That was the first time she had ever talked about her transition, and as curious as Clare had been, she had thought it was rude to ask. Sure, there had to have been some decent stories, but it didn’t really matter. Miss Susie was a woman, simple as that."When this came up, I was kind of surprised because while I understood why Miss Susie never spoke to Claire about her transition, Claire has only been in the town for about a month.  However any other interactions between the two are barely brought into the book and again because the author doesn't really give you a time line in regards to sessions you are kind of guessing that she had been there for a month - this part however is confirmed later on though at school.As I said above, the flow in regards to the timeline in the book is just all over the place, there is no sessions to give you a rough idea as to what period of time has passed, if you aren't aware of when Home Coming is, then that part of the book is going to be rather confusing.  There was nothing that gave the book an obvious session change, in fact I don't even think the weather was ever spoke about once in the book.  The good news is that I have a rough idea as to when Thanks Giving is!Over all, it's decent book, I do think that younger teens would enjoy it, it's not too deep, it's focus is LGBT, it's not the best book to read, but it can be used as a starting point.